As a former English teacher with a PhD in literature, I’m very word-oriented, so my initial reaction to being asked to review MindJet’s MindManager was that it would not be very helpful to me.  I didn’t expect the graphic nature of the program to be a good fit to my organizational style, but I was wrong.
 
The program was very simple to learn.  I used the tutorial, which took about 30 minutes, and once or twice I checked the help for how to do a particular task, but in general the program is very easy to understand. I won’t say it’s intuitive, but it does work along the general principles we’ve all come to expect in Windows programs.  I was actually using the program to organize my work in about 30 minutes.
 
And that’s where I was surprised.  The problem with my work in HR is that I have so many one-off projects and so much data coming at me, that it’s very difficult to stay focused on longer-term goals, and I imagine this is a problem common to most professional positions these days.  The first thing I did with MindManager was use it to chart my department’s strategic goals and then start assigning the many projects on my to-do list to the various strategic goals.  It was really surprising to me how many of the things we were spending time on that weren’t tied to the strategic goals.  The graphic nature of MindManager communicated that in a way that I think was far more immediate than if I had tried to do the same organizing through a list or outline. 
 
In the few hours I’ve spent on MindManager, I’ve discovered a tool that helps me see the work of my department from a different perspective than I normally do, and with little upfront investment in learning the software.  I’m delighted to have this new tool to help in organizing my work.  Thank you for the opportunity to review it!